Does anyone remember Sam and Bethany Torode?

Does anyone remember Sam and Bethany Torode?

Bethany Patchin became Bethany Torode after she met and married one of her many e-mail correspondents in the days following the publication of an article she wrote about saving her first kiss for marriage. The predictable follow-up articles about the glories of motherhood (she was pregnant by honeymoon's end, at age 19), the importance of a stay-at-home parent, "usually the mother," etc., followed. In 2002, she and her husband published a book called "Open Embrace" wherein they decried the use of contraception. This made all kinds of (almost universally positive) evangelical headlines because they're Protestants. To their credit, when after four kids in five years Bethany was exhausted and depressed, they re-examined their positions and issued a "partial recanting" of the NFP (natural family planning) they previously trumpeted.

What? You mean skipping from large-family homeschooling to marriage and parenting, with no time in between to pursue your own interests, figure out who you are, or experience adult life unencumbered ISN'T the best way to make a marriage last? Pregnant at the end of your honeymoon at age 19 isn't ideal? Shocking.

I am sure it has been very, very difficult for them, especially for Bethany, as the bulk of child rearing work in these families always falls on Mom. I wish them well and hope that the outcry against them isn't too loud now that their divorce is public knowledge.

I've never heard of the couple 'til now, but am truly sorry to hear it - rough rough way to go and with four little kids.

Just a thought - you might want to save anything you find particularly comment-worthy or instructive on the older blogs. The owners might decide to take them down when they realize that armchair-anthropologists are examining the stuff. Which is totally within their rights!

No question that divorce happens even when people are much more fully prepared. But I cannot imagine how bad it must be for evangelical publishing stars to divorce. Besides deeply held beliefs about the evils of divorce (and Bethany, at least, appears to still be a Christian, as her blog mentions her church), they had to know they would face astonishing public scrutiny, as they did when they partially recanted their position on contraception. To get divorced *anyway*, my GOD, they must've wanted out BADLY.

I firmly believe the divorce rate would drop by half if you had to be 30 years old to get a marriage license.

tvr wrote:
That is true! It is in the same vein as Josh and Anna's marriage advice on their website.... Until you have been married for a significant time you can't dish out advice!

Totally agree. I've been married for over a decade. I still wouldn't feel comfortable presenting myself as an expert. I think we've succeeded so far in spite of my relationship skills, not because of them.

I read a bit of Bethany's blog, and I really feel for her. She sounds so sad. I haven't read the older posts, but I can forgive an 18 or 19 year old thinking that they have all the answers about relationships. Lord knows when I was 18 I thought I had everything all figured out. Looking at some recent posts, I was pleasantly surprised to see that she's pretty average. She mentions going to Disney World with some family members - something I don't think many fundies would do.

I read about their conversion to Orthodoxy a while back (Sam wrote an article about it), but I hadn't heard about a divorce. My thirteen year old self is completely shocked. Bethany was totally held up as a Brio poster child-they're even in the revised edition of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. I'm glad she seems to have kind people in her life because I can only imagine the criticism she has faced.

There's a huge push now -- including a Christianity Today cover story in the last five or six months -- to get fundie kids marrying early. Bethany and Sam are great examples of why that is such a bad idea. I'm 31, and it's only in the last three and a half years or so that I have forcefully and confidently been who I really am, if you know what I mean. I cannot FATHOM the infinitesimal odds that, if I'd married at 18 or 19, the person I married and I would have grown together in ways that allowed us to stay compatible.

I feel very, very, very sad for Bethany. She's 26 or 27 years old with FOUR little kids, a divorced mom on her own. Wow. On the other hand, I am proud of her for de-fundifying herself.

So she was Catholic then? That's different than being fundie, although it goes along with her belief in NFP. The stupid thing is that about 80% of Catholics use artificial birth control and yet SHE was excommunicated.

Oh, NOW it all comes together. I kept wondering why they seemed so familiar. I remember reading about them in an Orthodox women's magazine a few years back when I was doing ethnography at an Orthodox convent. Yikes, what a crazy path she's traveled. I'm so glad she seems to be healing.

It took place in September 2008, which is shortly before she and Sam split up, but she doesn't allude to marital problems.

She's too much of a free thinker to have stayed fundie forever, methinks.

Read it, interesting, thanks, darkp!

You know, the question that occurred as I read it and thought of all the other Internet celebrities (Botkins, Emily, Duggars, et.al.) was, "Why would anybody want to live their lives so openly and so publically?"

Do they suppose they are being beacons of light, showing how following their rules will make you happy;/

No, they're Protestant. They were fundie evangelicals who became Orthodox, not Catholic.

That's what puzzles me, she talks about confessing with a priest and being "excommunicated." That doesn't happen with protestants. Although her use of the word Orthodoxy makes me wonder if she could have been Greek Orthodox, as Catholics generally don't use that word to describe their church.